Biden's plan would also set limits on launch prices for drugs with no competition, repeal the bar on Medicare negotiating drug prices and limit price increases above the overall inflation rate. (Photo: Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg)
Presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden entered the health-care reform fray, offering the addition of a public option to the existing plan rather than heading in the direction of Medicare for All.
According to The Hill, Biden would not only offer individuals an option to buy coverage through public health insurance, like Medicare, but would increase tax credits to help middle-class families and expand coverage to low-income Americans in the 14 states that have blocked the ACA. The public option would be premium free to those who are eligible for affordable care in those states—with auto enrollment for people making below 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
As touted on Biden's campaign site, “If your insurance company isn't doing right by you, you should have another, better choice. Whether you're covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without coverage altogether, the Biden Plan will give you the choice to purchase a public health insurance option.”
Biden's plan would also set limits on launch prices for drugs with no competition, repeal the bar on Medicare negotiating drug prices, limit price increases above the overall inflation rate and let people buy prescription drugs from other countries. Pharmaceutical corporations would also no longer get a tax break for their spending on advertisements.
That that's not the only tie to health care that landed Biden in the headlines this weekend, with Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, accusing the former VP of attacking his proposed Medicare for All plan with misinformation.
“I don't want to start over. How many of you out there have had someone you've lost to cancer?” Biden said of Medicare for All. “Or cancer yourself? No time, man. We cannot have a hiatus of six months, a year, two, three, to get something done. People desperately need help now.”
According to Sanders, Biden's comment is misinformation about his Medicare for All plan, which would not require starting over, instead using a transition period to make sure that everyone was covered. “Over a four-year period, we will transition to a system in which Medicare is expanded to cover every man, woman, and child in the country,” he told CNN.
Sanders added, “It is preposterous to argue that as we expand Medicare for All that people with cancer and other illnesses will not get the care that they need. In fact, under Medicare for All, the good news is that we will end the horror of millions of people going into bankruptcy and financial distress simply because they need hospital care for serious conditions.”
Biden is no fan of Medicare for All, and he does not support such a plan or even a transition to one. He also does not support eliminating private insurance.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
